


What it Takes to Fly

by untilitbreaks



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: 1.000 Paper Cranes, Again, Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Hoshide Mukai and Wakata are Japanese astronauts, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Moving On, Nondescript Terminal Illness, paper cranes, tiny tiny tiny reference to contemplation of self harm but be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 17:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13463544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untilitbreaks/pseuds/untilitbreaks
Summary: Tooru's life changed the moment he began junior high—or maybe it was one particular day in junior high, when he'd given Hajime a piece of paper and asked him to color his world.Hajime runs away with the opportunity, and Tooru gives him more, and doesn't regret a single bit of it. Not when Hajime doesn't turn back, or when their lives become so hopelessly entwined that Tooru can't picture himself untangling himself—nor does he want to.But it's okay, because with Hajime, Tooru can feel the wind beneath his wings, and it's all he needs to take off.In other words: a story of happiness, sadness, realization, forgiveness, moving on, and life.





	What it Takes to Fly

Looking back on it, Tooru didn’t remember when the habit had first come to be. It was something that he thought back on fondly, memories vague but happy, and it was enough to satisfy him. 

Tooru’s first year at Kitagawa Daiichi was when he’d realized several things. Junior high wasn’t as scary as it sounded, as often as adults had told him it would be at _such a prestigious!_ junior high. He was apparently incredibly handsome. And most importantly, he was lucky, because friends weren’t easy to come across.

But he had Hajime, so that wasn’t a problem, and Tooru was happy.

Elementary school hadn’t been very important to Tooru. He could remember the volleyball, the friends he’d made—the ones he’d lost—a few field trips, his teachers, and the trends. Junior high, he soon found out, wasn’t much different. The volleyball was more intense, and he loved that. He didn’t really have friends, besides Hajime, but girls followed him around everywhere, so he didn’t care. The field trips weren’t as fun, the teachers were more strict, and the trends were just as terrible.

Looking back on it, Tooru didn’t know what changed. He didn’t know if it was the idea of practicing something so locked into tradition, or if he just hated losing.

Hajime’s lines were perfectly straight and his directions were clear, but Tooru didn’t have the natural affinity to do it that Hajime did. It wasn’t as if he could honestly say that he hadn’t tried, because he had—he’d done everything within his power to learn how to make the cranes, reading tutorials and looking up videos and asking classmates for help, classmates _other_ than Hajime, who folded paper cranes like he’d been born knowing how to fold them correctly.

Tooru wasn’t at all jealous that his classmates flocked to Hajime, wondering how he’d made the cranes and begging him to teach them how. Maybe he had been at first, envious of the smiles Hajime had given them. Moreso, Tooru was frustrated. He was used to being better at things than Hajime without trying, and being more popular, and having more friends.

When it counted, Hajime was more well-liked. That stung Tooru’s pride a little, but he tried not to let it show, even as he crumpled up his latest attempt at a paper crane and tossed it into the recycling bin.

Hajime sat next to Tooru, not that that was even a question. He frowned as he watched Tooru return to his seat and pull out a notebook, deciding on the spot that he’d rather do his homework than waste time on origami that he’d never be able to do, despite claiming not even five minutes ago that today was going to be the day in which he turned around his paper crane folding failures.

“My guide didn’t help?” Hajime said. His fingers twitched. There were two paper cranes sitting neatly on his desk, made as demonstrations for his friends, who had never ceased to be amazed by his work. “I thought it would.”

“So did I,” Tooru said with a huff. “But I’m not trying it any more. I’m just not good at it.”

“Why don’t you try—”

“It’s not going to work,” Tooru insisted. “I really don’t care that much. You can just be better at it than me. I’m fine with that, really.”

“Oh, okay,” Hajime said. He looked away from Tooru and took a piece of patterned green paper off the top of the stack of fancy origami paper he’d been using. He began folding, and Tooru wondered if it was going to be another crane or if he was ever going to learn how to make anything else, and if he was making it for himself or if he was going to give it to someone else who didn’t know who to fold paper correctly.

Tooru made sure to sigh loudly, even though he absolutely did not want anything to do with the cranes, and turned his back slightly so that he didn’t have to face Hajime and watch his fingers dance across the paper and shape it into something beautiful.

He had no idea why he was jealous. He shouldn’t have cared as much as he did. He should have just been happy for Hajime, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything that he’d want to admit to Hajime.

He got over it quickly; he set up his math homework and pleased himself by thinking about how convenient it would be if he finished it before the extra time he had now in class ended. He pointedly looked away from Hajime—until he felt a tap on his shoulder, and he couldn’t help but turn around in surprise.

“For you,” Hajime said, and held out a crane in cupped hands, holding it delicately, seemingly reverently, careful not to bend it unintentionally before he passed it off to Tooru. “I’ll always make them for you if you can’t.”

“I don’t want your pity prize,” Tooru said, but cupped his hands under Hajime’s anyway. 

“It’s not,” Hajime said. He tipped the crane into Tooru’s outstretched hands. “I just wanted you to have one. And, umm, I can make more later on, if you like this one.”

_I want you to be happy_ went unsaid, but Tooru couldn’t have expected any more at their age even though they had told each other in countless other ways.

“I guess I’d never want the paper cranes I made myself, if I ever did figure out how to make them,” Tooru said, turning over the paper crane in his hands. “Yours will always be much cuter. Thank you, Iwa-chan.”

Despite the fact that it had Hajime’s idea to make it for Tooru, and that he hadn’t taken more than a few minutes at most to make it, he was unnecessarily flustered by Tooru’s compliment. He mumbled his gratitude and glanced away, but Tooru found him looking at him again seconds later, searching for a reaction.

About two weeks later, Tooru half-heartedly attempted to make his own paper crane again, under Hajime’s direction. He was so successful that Hajime gasped when he saw the finished product and gave Tooru a hug that was probably a little too tight. By that point, the satisfaction that Tooru felt when he accomplished the crane was minimal, and by the next week, he’d completely moved on from the trend.

Hajime never did, though, but Tooru didn’t realize why until much later.

 

Eventually Tooru became used to Hajime sliding him cranes at the most random opportunities, but he couldn’t say that he was opposed to it, because, in an odd way, it showed that Hajime cared.

He received a crane one day as he was doing work in class that Hajime had already finished. The tips of his ears were dusted pink. Tooru received another crane one day during lunch, thrown on top of his food when Hajime had gotten up to bring a paper to the office. 

It became clear to Tooru that Hajime was embarrassed of the cranes—or, not the cranes themselves, but giving them to Tooru. When a paper crane bounced across his folder one day as they were doing work, and Hajime _didn’t_ seem sheepish about it, Tooru was surprised.

He drew the paper crane closer to him, both to inspect it and make sure that their teacher didn’t see and chide Hajime for making it and throwing it at Tooru in class. It was made out of a piece of lined paper, slightly smaller than most of Hajime’s creations, the creases too thick to me considered elegant. 

One of of the wings, Hajime had written a note. Tooru extended one of the wings to look at it. 

_I’m pretty sure number nine is impossible Tooru HELP ME._

Tooru grinned to himself and wrote back, on the other wing, _And what are you going to give me for that? Answers don’t come cheap._ He waited until he was sure that their teacher was looking the other way, and then he tossed the crane back at Hajime.

It hit him on the side of the head, and he snatched it up before it fell on the floor. He looked over at Tooru and scowled, but it was nothing compared to the way he glowered at him when he read what Tooru has written.

Hajime’s response was a mess of capital letters and scribbles that Tooru could have been able to interpret into words if he tried hard enough. It seemed to end in a legible enough plea, so Tooru copied down his work along the folds of the crane. It was more amusing than it should have been to watch Hajime try to find his work in chronological order.

But he wasn’t mad at Tooru, so it wasn’t the first time it happened, and eventually it became a habit.

They did it when they were bored in class, when one of them needed answers, and when they wanted to talk about someone behind their back. Most notably had been the time Tooru had missed school and Hajime had dropped off his work, but had left no instructions except for those written on the inside of a paper crane.

Tooru would always clearly remember the day in which it had turned to become a source of comfort.

He heard the whispers. He knew that girls liked him, but he hadn’t thought much about it until he turned them down and they talked—they said he was fake, that his attitude never matched his face, that he didn’t care about anything but volleyball and getting good grades. 

It didn’t bother Tooru, for the most part. He wasn’t interested in girls, and the amount of friends he had told him that not everybody believed in what they had to say. He didn’t mind the dirty looks in the hall, or the gossip when he walked by. It was nothing new.

He even pretended not to notice when they spoke of volleyball, that he seemed so good but had only made it on the team as a second year, that he’d been replaced in matches as a _third year_ by a _first year._

Even worse was the first day he’d had to wear a knee brace to school—when the states had become vicious, when he’d tried fruitlessly to explain himself, and when Hajime had failed to protect him.

At lunch Hajime left a paper crane on his pencil case in his favorite shade of blue. On it was written, _Are you okay?_

Tooru quelled the tears that welled up in his eyes and tucked the crane carefully into his pocket, and when he saw Hajime next, he hugged him tightly. 

“You’re the most brilliant person I know,” Hajime whispered. “I know it hurts when other people can’t see that.”

The first time Tooru had gotten off the phone with his mother and had cried the whole way home, he found a row of tiny multicolored paper cranes lined up in his locker, and had almost broken down again.

He had never gotten to thank Hajime for them, because Hajime had disappeared from his side as soon as he’d opened his locker. But he kept them all there until the end of the year, and then he’d taken them home and lined them all up again in the same order, and he was pretty sure that Hajime had known, but had never said anything about it.

 

The paper cranes were something Tooru rarely thought about unless someone else asked them about it. It was just something they did, something that had occurred so naturally between them that Tooru never felt like he’d had to give it much thought.

Tooru knew that Hajime rarely thought about it either, despite the fact that he was the one making he cranes. But he was always the one to answer questions when they were asked, because really—Tooru was always dumbfounded.

How was he to explain the paper cranes when it stemmed so far back in their relationship? It was like trying to ask him when they’d become friends and why they’d chosen to stay with each other over everyone else. Tooru didn’t have an answer for that. It was simply how it has always been, and how it always would be.

That was also why Tooru rarely thought hard about the logistics of Hajime visiting his house. 

Tooru barely bothered kicking off his shoes before running up the stairs to his bedroom, Hajime on his heels, just as eager as he was. Tooru yanked open the door, dumped his school supplies on his desk, and turned around in time for Hajime to crash into him.

“Ow, ow, Iwa-chan!” Tooru yelped, stumbling backwards. “Iwa-chan!!”

“Ow, sorry!” Hajime said, but he was laughing as he pushed himself away from Tooru. “Did it hurt?”

“What? Of course it did! Iwa-chaaaan! Stop laughing!”

Predictably, they didn’t settle down for a while after that—Tooru eventually got them snacks, and they ate as they started homework.

Or at least, pretended to.

“I really hate math,” Hajime said with a sigh. He was absentmindedly—or maybe not so absentmindedly—folding his graph paper into a crane. “I wish you didn’t need it for science.”

“You’re good at it, though,” Tooru said, as Hajime folded a wing. “You’re going to be so good.”

Hajime shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I enjoy it.” He looked down at his crane. It was a little lopsided. “For you,” he said, and held it out for Tooru. 

Tooru took the crane from him and stared at it. It was smudged with pencil marks and had half of a math formula written across its neck in Hajime’s inelegant scrawl.

Tooru loved it.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it. He curled his fingers around the crane and leaned over to the dresser beside his bed, where the rest of his cranes were lined up. “I think it belongs with the rest of them.”

Hajime tilted his head. “You’ve kept all of them?” he asked, straightening up to look at the impressive collection. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course I did,” Tooru said, feeling self-conscious. “I named them all, too.”

“You did.”

“Obviously. There’s Hoshide, Mukai, Wakata...”

“I can’t believe you,” Hajime said, shaking his head. “I... I didn’t know you kept them.”

Tooru shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Hajime mirrored his shrug. “I guess that was a stupid question.”

“Maybe so,” Tooru said, and opened up his notebook to get Hajime a new piece of graph paper.

 

Not all of their teachers were smart enough to separate Tooru and Hajime in class. That, or they’d realized before all attempts were fruitless—they could communicate from across the room with a mere glance, or, in the presence of weak-willed teachers, would simply talk from across the room without remorse.

It took until their third year for them to encounter a teacher who was adamant on cracking them, as if they were some kind of school legend. They’d been sitting in alphabetical order since the start of the school year, but were still far enough away so that talking would have been rude.

Somehow, they’d gotten away with it so far, although detentions had been threatened on numerous occasions. Tooru always laughed these threats off with a grin, and although Hajime put on an equally brave face, Tooru knew that it bothered him more than he let on.

Regardless, that had very little influence on what they did attempt to get away with in class, and they’d been nothing but successful for years.

Bored after finishing an exam, Tooru looked over at Hajime. He was looking out the window, making paper cranes out of a stack of orange sticky notes. He wasn’t paying attention to the crane he was making, his fingers moving purely on muscle memory. 

Tooru sighed longingly and rested his chin on his hand.

For the most part, nobody had noticed Hajime’s cranes despite how often he made them. Hajime didn’t show them to anyone but Tooru and never had, not since they had become _theirs._ If someone asked he smiled politely and said it was just habit, or maybe up another excuse, and the tone of his voice suggested that he wasn’t willing to begin a discussion. A more simple explanation would have been more sufficient, honest and easy, but Hajime had never bothered to change his answer.

Tooru could never really identify how he felt about that, although it was more something that he supposed wasn’t up for his own personal debate and was more a struggle that Hajime had to face alone.

At times like this, none of that mattered.

Hajime twisted around in his seat and caught Tooru’s eyes perfectly on cue, his expression lighting up, as if he hadn’t realized that Tooru had been staring. Tooru forced himself to grin back, because anything else would have been weird. Hajime held up a paper crane with one hand, and Tooru’s breath caught in his throat and burned.

He knew what that meant. _For you,_ Hajime was saying, in his own perfect language, and Hajime didn’t know how he was going to respond. Quick to give up, Tooru grinned back at him and tried to convey a thank you.

It was terribly messy, and while he thought that Hajime had been able to understand him, Hajime only frowned and shook his head. He lifted the crane and then moved his hand back as if he was going to throw it. And then he stopped again, and it hit Tooru as to why.

_He’s trying to make a paper crane fly, all for me._

Hajime put down the paper crane, and for a moment, Tooru thought that he had given up. It was impossible, after all, to make a paper crane fly. But then Hajime began digging around in his bag, and he pulled out a piece of paper to fold, his lines as straight and definite as they were when he was making the cranes themselves. 

It was easy to figure out what he was doing, but that didn’t keep Tooru, stunned into silence, from watching, mesmerized, as Hajime finished the paper plane and opened up a pocket in his bag to find a glue stick, of all things, like he was still in elementary school and the one person to carry one around.

Tooru that that he was eccentric. Hajime probably would have laughed at that description, but Tooru didn’t think that he was that far off from the truth, because he didn’t know anybody else in the world who’d attempt to glue a paper crane on to a paper plane and attempt to make it fly.

There was absolutely no way that it would work, and Tooru was pretty sure that Hajime knew that, but, evidently, he didn’t care.

He didn’t wait for the glue to dry before catching Tooru’s eyes and attempting to throw the crane. The plane, as well-made as Tooru was sure it was, spun around in the air and went crashing down to the ground—impossibly, and probably entirely by luck—in front of Tooru’s feet. 

Tooru was too surprised to probably gauge Hajime’s reaction, so he picked up the crane and inspected it. It wasn’t damaged too poorly, besides a bent wing and how it popped off the plane seconds after Tooru had picked it up, but it was in his hands and Hajime, miraculously, hadn’t been caught.

On the paper crane was written, _Didn’t I promise that they would always come to you?_ with a little winky face that Tooru spent much too long trying to decipher. 

It was entirely absurd, but it was also wonderful and so like Hajime and them that Tooru couldn’t possibly call it that. After class, Tooru had ineloquently approached him with several questions in mind, but the only one that he’d been able to ask was “What _was_ that?” and Hajime had laughed so hard he never got an answer.

It took several months for their teacher to notice Hajime’s new method passing notes, and by then, he’d practically perfected the art. Hajime didn’t even have to try to explain himself. He’d shocked their teacher so badly that she didn’t even ask questions, and that, Tooru decided, would probably be how he remembered Hajime’s junior high legacy.

 

The paper cranes were a habit from their first year of junior high, and by the time they started high school, Tooru had expected Hajime to stop making them for him. More likely was that he’d simply never thought of it. Things like paper cranes didn’t follow a person across years, but they had, for Tooru and Hajime, and so they let it.

Tooru didn’t know why, exactly, it had stuck. It might have been the very basic promise Iwaizumi had made to him when he’d first started making the cranes, or the promise he’d made when he’d realized that Tooru saved each and every one of the paper cranes he’d made him. He didn’t know why, and maybe Hajime didn’t, either, but nobody asked questions so it was a habit that stayed.

High school wasn’t scary, because he had Hajime. He didn’t know how their relationship with each other had become quite so strong, but it was the most natural progression in the world, and when he had the option, one day, to keep their relationship as best friends the same or take it further, he hadn’t even thought about it, really, before kissing him.

Hajime smiled against his lips when he did, because it was so natural and perfect and the timing to make a change couldn’t have been better, and even though it felt like they were young to make such promises, Hajime already felt like a forever to Tooru. He didn’t think that it was simply first love that was making him think that way.

Hajime had been a forever for him since elementary school, when they’d first become inseparable best friends, a title that hadn’t cracked at all over the years, and had been joined by several more descriptions.

The paper cranes fit easily into their new relationship and the domesticity that came along with it. Hajime still left Tooru notes, just as he had when they were in junior high, in his locker room locker and regular one, and sometimes he’d pass them to him in the hallways between classes, and other times he’d make Tooru lunch—Tooru _loved_ that, because Hajime always spoiled him and made him everything he liked and he also made the cutest bentos Tooru had ever seen—and there would be a paper crane stuffed in a corner somewhere.

Tooru had only almost eaten one once, and that had been because he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep and because he’d been busy actually talking to Hajime as he’d been eating, not because he’d actually fallen for Hajime’s trick of making it out of paper meant to blend in with the rest of it, not at all.

Overall, very few changes occurred between them even as their relationship did become romantic. They knew each other better than anyone else in the world, and that was what made the difference between them and typical high school couples.

One thing that did change, though, was something that Tooru hadn’t anticipated. They hadn’t gotten questions about how close they were in junior high, or the freakishly effortless way in which they communicated, and especially not the paper cranes. That changed in high school, due entirely to the volleyball club.

Hanamaki and Matsukawa were good friends. To Tooru, they seemed like the types that would grow on him as the years passed—they were funny, nice people, and dedicated to volleyball. They were good teammates from the start, so Tooru didn’t doubt that they could also become good friends.

Apparently, neither Hanamaki nor Matsukawa had thought so thoroughly about the logistics of becoming friends, because they started sitting with Tooru and Hajime during lunch soon after they’d met and they’d begun to hit it off from there.

“So is it you who makes the paper cranes, Iwaizumi?” Hanamaki asked one day, after Tooru had finished eating and was playing absentmindedly with the wings on the crane Hajime had given him with his lunch. “They’re really good. How long have you been making them?”

If Hajime had been as surprised as Tooru to hear the question being asked so directly, he didn’t let on to it. He only shrugged, moved an inch closer to Tooru, and responded, “Three years or so? It’s just something I do when I’m bored.”

“Really? I always wanted to learn how to make them, but nobody would ever teach me. I think I was annoying in junior high.”

“You weren’t annoying in junior high,” Matsukawa said.

“You avoided me in junior high,” Hanamaki said, raising his eyebrows, and Matsukawa rolled his eyes, unable to protest. “Anyway, have you heard of the thousand paper cranes legend?”

Hajime shook his head. 

“Well, supposedly, if you make one thousand paper cranes, you’ll be granted your most desired wish by the gods,” Hanamaki explained. “You’ve probably made a thousand paper cranes by now.”

Hajime shared a glance with Tooru. “Maybe.”

“It’s just a legend, though,” Hanamaki said, folding up his trash. “I’d probably get tired after a while if I tried to do it.”

“That’s a lot of paper,” Matsukawa said with a sigh.

“I think I might have heard of that legend before,” Tooru said, sitting up straighter. His shoulder brushed against Hajime’s and he resisted the urge to lean in closer. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“Maybe so,” Hanamaki said. “If you try it out, let me know if your wish comes true.”

 

Despite the fact that they never left each other’s side during graduation, it wasn’t until after they’d said all of their goodbyes that they finally got to breathe.

Tooru’s fan club had met up with them at the soonest possible opportunity, and Tooru had brushed them off quickly. It was over. All of it was over, and he was absolutely not going to tell them where he was going to university despite the fact that, if they searched hard enough on the internet for it, the information would be relatively easy to find.

Hajime remained close to Tooru’s side when they said goodbye to the volleyball club. They’d said goodbye before, during a meeting, and there would be graduation parties later on, but Tooru still insisted. A part of him would always be the captain of the Aoba Johsai volleyball club, and a part of him would never leave the gymnasium. 

Hajime’s parents were adamant about bringing them out to eat after graduation, so Tooru may have tipped off the volleyball club about where they were going so that they could meet up without totally disregarding Hajime’s parents’ plans. Tooru had no idea if they would come or not, but a part of him didn’t care.

That was the part of him that had been hyperaware of Hajime’s presence all day, the part of him that had been itching to hold Hajime’s hand and drag him into an empty classroom to kiss him senseless, and the part of him that had initiated the conversation that they were about to have, that they had been putting off for so long Tooru had no idea when the pressing need to have it had first come up.

“I have a graduation present for you at home,” Tooru said. It wasn’t even that hot out, but he was sweating more than he should have been. “And I know this—” he waved at the parking lot they were standing in “—isn’t very romantic, but I knew that you would have probably hit me if I’d brought you under sakura blossoms. So.”

Hajime was leaning up against his father’s car, from which he’d just retrieved the present he had for Tooru. He straightened up a bit and looked at Tooru with wide eyes. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he said. “It’s enough to have—you know, _you,_ and I really wasn’t expecting anything.”

“You should have,” Tooru said. “I—Hajime—you mean a lot to me.”

A smile ghosted across Hajime’s face. “I know.”

“And I—I didn’t want this to get ruined earlier, so I didn’t talk to the girls when they came over to us,” Tooru said. His breathing came a little quicker, and his heart was pounding, even though he wasn’t about to stammer out a confession. He knew how Hajime felt about him. He didn’t need to be nervous. Unless Hajime really was going to hit him. “But I—saved this for you, and I didn’t want to give them my third button either, because that’s for best friends—but—I want you—to have this, I—”

“Hey, Tooru,” Hajime said softly. He stepped closer to Tooru and put his hands on his shoulders. Tooru desperately wanted to hug him. “Why are you talking like I’m going to be upset at you. I’m honored that you would want to give it to me.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Tooru breathed. He reached up to his second button and tore it loose. He’d already spent the majority of the graduation ceremony nervous enough to break the strings holding it on. “I want you to have this, Iwa-chan, Hajime, I want you to love me.”

“I already do,” Hajime said. He wrapped his arms tightly around Tooru. “Silly Oikawa.”

“That’s a new one,” Tooru breathed, holding Hajime tight to his chest.

“Well, I thought I could stand to be a little more gentle.” Hajime pulled away and pried the button away from Tooru’s hands, clenched tightly in his nervousness. “Thank you Tooru, I—” He swallowed thickly. “I mean it.”

He turned and reached for the present he’d left on the hood of the car. Tooru’s breath caught in his throat. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he said. “I’m just happy enough that you… that you accepted…”

“It’s just something small,” Hajime said, handing the present to Tooru. “You can probably guess what it is. I—I don’t even know why I wrapped it, really, you can kind of see the shape right through it.”

“I don’t mind,” Tooru said. He licked his lips and poked one finger under the fold of the wrapping paper. “I really appreciate it.”

Hajime hadn’t been lying about the jar shape. Tooru had been able to guess that much, and if he was being entirely honest, he would have been entirely satisfied if all Hajime had given him was an empty jar. It took him a second to recognize the colorful shapes inside the jar, and when he did, his eyes immediately welled up with tears.

“There are a thousand of them in there,” Hajime said, sounding sheepish. “I didn’t really know what to wish for, so I guess I’m giving the wish to you—or something like that. Or I, uh, I wish for happiness, between us, and love, and…”

“I love it,” Tooru said. The jar was a satisfying weight in his hands despite the light weight of each individual crane. “I love it, I love you, thank you so much, Hajime.”

Through his own tears, Tooru could make out the wetness of Hajime’s eyes. Hajime gasped a little, laughing, and hugged him again, and if Tooru had had any reservations about the future, they’d all been abolished.

Later that night, when he opened up the jar to look at them, he found tiny notes on each of the paper cranes—notes, reminders, memories, and Tooru cried, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t with apprehension. 

 

The bathroom was ridiculously small, and one of the bedrooms was twice the size of the other one. When Tooru sat down on the pull-out sofa, he could feel every one of the springs. The water pressure of the shower was weak and the temperature of the water never went higher than lukewarm.

But it wasn’t terrible. The paint on the walls wasn’t peeling, like it had been in the first apartment they’d looked at. There was a spacious kitchen where they could spend their meals, and it became an unspoken agreement that the smaller bedroom didn’t really need to be used if they just shared a bed anyway. New furniture could be bought in time, or maybe Tooru’s parents would take pity upon their conditions and sponsor them.

But it was home, and it was a home that Tooru and Hajime were sharing together, and that was all that counted (especially considering that the majority of their time would be spent studying or working, since they’d both been lucky enough to find part-time jobs near their university campus. 

Tooru was almost certain that he could say the same for Hajime, but he knew, at least, that he loved their apartment.

One of the first things that he’d moved into the apartment, as soon as he’d had a table to put them on, was his paper crane collection. It had grown too large, over the years, to keep only on his desk. But when Hajime had seen the box Tooru had packed them in—the jar he’d given him for graduation nestled securely in the bottom corner—he’d grinned so widely Tooru thought that, maybe, he could take them all out again.

(When they had gotten fully unpacked, Tooru started leaving paper cranes everywhere. There were a few on each of their desks, on the countertops in the kitchen, on window sills, on top of the fridge, in the bathroom cabinets, and Hajime hadn’t even addressed Tooru about keeping his obsession in check until, one day, he’d been making dinner and a paper crane had fallen from the cabinet above and into his frying pan.)

But the best part, Tooru thought, was that Hajime still made him paper cranes.

They established a routine relatively soon after moving in, which Tooru owed to the years they’d spent practically living partially at each other’s houses. He was already used to seeing his toothbrush next to Hajime’s, and sharing a closet full of clothes with him—where Hajime’s belongings ended and where Tooru’s began wasn’t quite clear—and he was used to Hajime’s terrible habits, like leaving his things all around the house, and never remembering to wash dishes.

Hajime’s morning classes began earlier than Tooru’s, and while Tooru had originally insisted that it would be more romantic if they got up at the same time and began their day together, they quickly realized that they did terrible sharing space when they were getting ready in the morning. Hajime insisted that Tooru sleep later because he always stayed up too late doing homework anyway.

Tooru wasn’t at all hurt by this, because it only led to a routine that Tooru adored even more.

Hajime had always been insistent that Tooru eat breakfast, although Tooru had rarely heeded his advice during high school simply out of laziness. Tooru was sure that Hajime would have cooked for himself every morning regardless of whether or not Tooru was there—but either way, Hajime always left something for him. Tooru always thanked him for breakfast, but besides that, they had never talked about it, and Tooru always ended up being surprised by what he made.

What he cared about more, though, was that Hajime always left him a paper crane. Hajime always left him notes—well wishes for the day, sometimes completely random facts, and they never ceased to make Tooru smile.

Except for that one time in which Hajime had made a paper crane out of a bill Tooru had thought he hadn’t paid yet, and he’d called Hajime, panicked, asking him whether their financial status or the song lyrics he’d scribbled across the bill were more important.

It turned out that Hajime had paid the bill online already, and he’d thought that he was being funny. Months later, Tooru would admit that, yes, it had sort of been funny, but it was until then that it had remained a sore spot for Tooru and Tooru alone.

Living with Hajime was new and exciting, but it was something that came effortlessly to them, as though it had always been meant to be.

 

Tooru was terrified. 

They’d had this discussion before. While it was legally impossible for them to get married, there was nothing stopping them from having a small ceremony and getting rings. Hajime had professed to wanting to get married at some point, but had never been explicit about how soon in the future he wanted that to be.

It seemed too soon. They’d just graduated college and barely had their lives together as it were. It might have been more responsible if they waited until they had stable jobs, a new apartment, and maybe a plan for the future at all.

But it had been seven years since Tooru had first confessed to Hajime, and they’d been best friends for over thirteen years.

It felt much longer than that—and Tooru wanted a lifetime more.

The paper cranes in his jacket pocket felt heavier than the ring box accompanying them. Tooru’s hands were disgustingly clammy, but Hajime had been holding his hand ever since they’d left the restaurant and hadn’t commented on it. The night air was cool faces, a welcome change to the heat of the day earlier, and the park they were walking through was perfectly peaceful.

The opportunity couldn’t be better for Tooru to go ahead and do it, but his nervousness was getting the best of him.

It wasn’t that he was worried that Hajime would turn him down. It wasn’t that. There was no reason why Tooru should be nervous, but he was anyway.

“Hey, Tooru,” Hajime said. He squeezed Tooru’s hand. “It’s getting late. We should, ah, maybe we should head back now.”

Tooru’s proposal was nothing grand. He’d planned it simply to be a quiet moment in which they’d have each other and be able to talk—he’d actually planned some type of romantic let’s-discuss-the-meaning-of-life type conversation, but he as clearly running out of time.

_It’s now or never—!_

“Hey, Iwa-chan,” Tooru said. He tugged on Hajime’s hand to get him to stop. When Hajime looked at him, his breath caught in his throat. “I—I…”

“What? Is there something you wanted to ask me?” Hajime asked, his eyes sparkling mischievously. 

_He knows! I put together this whole elaborate plan and he already knows!_

“Iwa-chan!!” Tooru gasped. He dropped Hajime’s hand and fumbled in his pockets for the paper cranes. He held them out to Hajime, face bright red, heart beating wildly. “Iwa-chan!! I was g-going to give these to you, and—and—it was going to be so r-romantic, and I was going to make cheesy me-metaphors, and—you already guessed it!”

“Slow down, Tooru,” Hajime said. He cupped his hands over Tooru’s. “You know I’m going to say yes no matter how you do it.”

“B-but I didn’t even get to ask—!”

Hajime laughed. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

“B-b-but I c-can’t use my paper crane metaphors, a-and—“

“Take a deep breath,” Hajime said. He took a step forward and touched his forehead to Tooru’s. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t get overwhelmed.”

Tooru choked, blinking away tears, wishing that Hajime didn’t have to see. He gulped in breaths of air, thoughts becoming a blur in his mind as he tried to remember his speech.

“You can ask. I love you so much,” Hajime whispered.

“I love you, too,” Tooru said. “I—I love you so much, and I—I want you to stay by my side for as long as I live. I—I know we’re not perfect, and I know we fight, but you’ve seen ever side of me, and I’ve seen every side of you, and I love—I love every part of you. I—oh, _Hajime,_ there was so much I wanted to say—“

“It’s okay,” Hajime said. He squeezed Tooru’s hands. “It’s okay, I’m never going to leave you, you have time.”

“Hajime, I…” Tooru parted his hands and let the paper cranes fall into Hajime’s. He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out the ring. “I want you to take care of me. I want you to make me paper cranes, and make me breakfast, and I want you to be the one I lean on. And I… I want you to do the same with me.”

“Yes,” Hajime said. He grinned through his tears. “Yes, yes, yes, of course I will, of course I’ll marry you, Tooru.”

The next morning, Hajime, wearing his ring, delivered Tooru paper cranes folded out of marriage registration forms. He was blushing, and when Tooru pulled him down for a kiss, he laughed against his lips.

Tooru couldn’t remember ever being so happy.

 

One of Tooru’s biggest regrets was that he hadn’t been there for Hajime when he’d been diagnosed.

Despite Hajime’s poor prognosis, he was the one reassuring Tooru when he got home, tired from spending the day at the hospital. He was the one telling Tooru that he still had time, and promising that he wasn’t going to leave him yet.

The word “yet” hung heavily over Tooru’s head well into the night, after he’d made dinner for them as usual and they’d watched a movie and kissed goodnight like nothing was wrong.

So much was left unsaid. Like the fact that Hajime wouldn’t be home for long, not with his condition. Like the fact that, soon enough, he’d only be living on borrowed time. Like the fact that, as a medical professional, Hajime should have seen the symptoms sooner—or maybe he had, and that was exactly the problem.

But Tooru also knew that it hadn’t completely sunken in for either of them until Hajime had woken up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, and then he’d curled up against Tooru’s chest and cried himself to sleep after confessing to Tooru how terrified he was.

In the morning, Tooru dragged him to the hospital again and was told that there was nothing that could be done. Hajime cried this time, but only because it hurt and the pain wouldn’t stop. 

A week later, Hajime got a more official diagnosis, and in a blur, he was sent away for treatment and life was meant to continue as normal for Tooru.

Their apartment was empty, without Hajime. There were no more paper cranes in the morning. There was silence, cold silence, and the texts Hajime sent him periodically did little to improve his mood.

When Tooru visited Hajime, Hajime greeted him with an exhausted smile and a kiss and a crane made out of hospital napkins and Tooru tried his best not to cry, but that only ever worked as long as it took for him to leave Hajime’s hospital room, and then he’d wait out the night in pain and fear and hope that the day wouldn’t be the day.

Hajime was quiet, now. He had little choice. They’d had little time to talk things through, to acquaint themselves with the idea that promises might not be forever, and newly whispered promises as Hajime lay pale against even whiter sheets spoke of new beginnings and recovery and nothing Tooru could see coming to them anytime soon.

It was truly a miracle that they’d made it so long without one of them blowing up. Tooru spent long days in his office, at the gym, staring in the mirror and contemplating the sharp edges of the razor sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink because Hajime had never put them away properly. One day he visited Hajime and screamed at him for ten minutes but it’d felt like an hour, and Hajime had shouted back and eventually they’d both grown too tired to yell anymore and they’d lapsed into silence, a silent apology that neither of them could make the effort to speak.

Tooru didn’t know how the fight had even started, but he’d spent the whole day thinking about how their marriage wasn’t legal, and when the time came, all the years he’d spent with Hajime wouldn’t even matter.

“I’m not mad at you,” Hajime whispered to Tooru as he began nodding off in the chair beside his bed. “I could never be mad at you.”

Tooru thought that he said, “I could never be mad at you either,” but he would never really know because he’d fallen asleep and he had no idea if he’d simply imagined himself speaking.

Maybe Hajime would never know everything Tooru wanted to tell him, because it was too much to put into words and when Tooru tried he could think of too many words, so he relied on Hajime to know himself because Hajime had always been so perspective, even through his sickness.

“I’m scared,” Hajime confessed to him one night, as they were lying with their limbs tangled together, against the wishes of Hajime’s nurse.

“Don’t be,” Tooru said to him, ghosting his lips over Hajime’s. “I’m never going to leave you. And it won’t hurt anymore, soon.”

He wasn’t sure himself if he meant the new treatment plan they were starting, or something else. 

 

Tooru’s last gift to Hajime had been a stack of nice origami paper, in all of Hajime’s favorite colors. Hajime had cried when Tooru had showed it to him—which he did often, although Tooru thought that maybe he was just noticing Hajime’s heart now—and Tooru had too, and even though they’d been crying for the same reason they didn’t speak of it.

The last time Tooru had seen Hajime, there had been a rainbow of paper cranes across the table beside his bed. Hajime’s fingers hadn’t stopped moving and he’d made paper cranes until his fingers hurt too bad to do so, on top of all of his other pain. Tooru suspected that his anxiety had been because he’d known, at least a part of him had, that it was time.

Hajime’s funeral ceremony was tiny. His direct family had made it, along with Tooru’s. One of his distant aunts came, and although Tooru had made sure that invitations were extended to all of his family and close friends, nobody else showed up besides a few old friends from the Seijoh volleyball club.

It was too small for somebody as grand as Hajime, and although Tooru knew that Hajime wouldn’t have cared, and that he’d have begged Tooru to let it go, Tooru couldn’t. 

Hajime deserves more, so much more, for someone with such a bright future, and not even Tooru had been able to give it to him.

But for Hajime, for his memory, Tooru didn’t let himself grieve longer than Hajime would have wanted him to.

Hajime had left him a note atop a box, in his inelegant scrawl, telling him not to open it until he’d accepted what had happened. Tooru wasn’t sure of how long it took him to open the box. He wasn’t sure why he was afraid—if it was because he had to accept Hajime’s death, or because he didn’t want to give up his last memory of him.

Inside were a few of the belongings Hajime had brought with him to the hospital. There was a book Tooru had recommended to him, a deck of cards they’d played games with. There was a change of his clothes that, blissfully, still smelled like him and not the sharp scent of disinfectant when Tooru pressed the shirt to his nose. There was the Godzilla keychain Tooru had bought him for a birthday when they were teenagers.

There was also a paper crane, of Tooru’s favorite shade of blue.

On its neck was written, “For you”.

Tooru opened the paper crane on instinct. He smoothed out the paper feeling both more numb than he’d felt when he’d been told that Hajime was gone and more alive than he’d felt in months.

 

_Tooru,_

_Back in high school I wished for happiness, and even after everything that has happened, I think that I got my wish, because I got years of happiness alongside you._

_I don’t have any regrets. I think that I had a good life. Fulfilling, if you really want to stretch it. I went to my dream college and worked my dream career and spent the best and worst moments of my life alongside the man of my dreams._

_Tooru, to me, you’re more than that. You’re my best friend. My partner. My pillar. My love. My better half. Not that any of those are in order. You’re all of those at once, and I couldn’t ask for anyone better, because there’s nobody else in the world who understands me as you do._

_I want you to remember the memories we’ve made together. Just because I won’t be with you anymore, physically, doesn’t mean that I’m not with you. I’m here if you need advice. If I’d had more time I would have given you another thousand cranes._

_But I have faith in you, Tooru. You’re the strongest person I know. You’ll be okay._

_I’m afraid that words will never suffice for what I wish to tell you. I can only hope that you understand—that you can feel as I do, because I know you can, Tooru. You’re the most brilliant person in the world. Words don’t give you justice and they’ll never explain the influence you had on me._

_I don’t want you to be sad. Don’t be. Don’t be scared of the future. For me, move on._

_When you need me, I’ll always find you. Wherever you are._

_Don’t make yourself forget, Tooru. Don’t make yourself stop loving._

_I love you._

_Hajime_

 

Time passed. Open wounds scarred over, although the marks never completely faded. Tooru healed. He moved on. He looked back on old memories and cried; he visited Hajime’s grave and smiled, and left messages for him on the wings of paper cranes.

And every morning he woke up to paper cranes lined up along his window sill, and to find them littered around the house, covered in notes from Hajme, reminders of his existence.

Looking back on it, Tooru moved on, but he’d never forget the one who’d taught him how to fly.


End file.
